County clerks: Please don’t shift gun law costs to us

The state’s county clerks issued a statement Thursday on New York’s revamped gun laws, urging lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resist the temptation to shift any costs of enforcing the law to the clerks’ offices.

The state Association of County Clerks highlighted seven areas of potential concern with life under the new laws, particularly when it comes to the implementation of a new database of semiautomatic rifles that are grandfathered in under the state’s bolstered assault-weapons ban.

The memo doesn’t appear to raise any concerns with the new laws as they were implemented, but rather with the potential to move costs to the county level in the future. Many of the concerns are addressed in the law; the soon-to-be-created rifle registry, for example, is controlled by State Police.

The association “opposes any effort to shift responsibility to county government regarding the rifle registry that is detailed in the Governor’s SAFE act,” the statement reads. “Such a change would amount to an unfunded mandate on county taxpayer.”

The clerks also issued their legislative priorities in Albany for 2013. Among them is a call to prohibit the release of pistol permit information to the general public. The state’s new gun laws allow an individual permit-holder to request a “privacy exemption” that would prohibit their information from being released, but otherwise the information would be available under open-records laws.

This association believes that the availability of pistol license information should be confidential except in the case of requests from law enforcement agencies and or the office of a District Attorney and will support legislation that furthers this goal,” the group wrote.

Courtesy of the clerks’ association, here are its potential concerns with the new gun laws: